The Possibility of Communication
by Meredith T. Tasaki
Summary: Being dead, if you're around to see it, really is unendurably awkward. In several important ways, Rodney was beginnning to realize, he'd lost all faith in the possibility of communication a long time ago.


The Possibility of Communication

Summary: Being dead, if you're around to see it, really is unendurably awkward. "In several important ways, Rodney was beginnning to realize, he'd lost all faith in the possibility of communication a long time ago."

Rating: PG to PG-13, language, quasi-character death

Disclaimer: I hold no rights to SGA, and I sure as hell have no rights to "that 80's Patrick Swayze movie". Or The Song That Never Ends.

Notes: This all came at once. One day; one spurt of writing (punctuated by switching music and such). Just got the idea this morning. Usually, my better stuff comes that way. I was pretty much a total zombie at school the next day, so please let me know if this was worth it.

Incidentally, my rationale for leaving out most of the parts with the flipping the hell out was essentially the same as my hatred for sitcoms: I don't like reading it, I don't like writing it, and you've seen it all before; you can fill in those blanks. I just thought I'd mention that I do realize there _would_ be flipping the hell out. I've just left it out for brevity's sake

(-)

It was a fragment from some translation, some diary, that was with him at the moment: _I have lost all faith in the possibility of communication._

_And it truly is a faith_, it had said.

"You do realize that this is in no way amusing," he said, "right?"

But no one answered; not his team, not the townspeople, not even those idiots who styled themselves "shamans". There went _their_ credibility.

"Damn it, it's not working," Sheppard hissed into his radio. "What the hell do we do?"

But there wasn't anything they could do, Rodney could see it at a glance. The Gate was too far away, they had no more epinepherine-- and the fact that Rodney was currently having an out-of-body experience did not bode very well for his survival.

"Look, just do the stupid ritual," he mocked. "We need their goodwill. What harm could it do?"

Test your loyalty, they'd said. Test your loyalty to _what_?

He really, really wished he'd thought to ask.

-

Carson had seemed-- fairly certain he was dead; and yes, medicine was voodoo, but he trusted the Ancient machines to diagnose _that_ much. Then again, probably he shouldn't. But his body was lying right there and it wasn't moving at all, and that eliminated most of the other possibilities.

The trouble was, he didn't quite seem to be gone yet. This appeared to invalidate _his_ theory of death.

Of course, there hadn't been any light, tunnels, or angels-- or hellfire, which more theorists probably would have predicted in his case-- so the Judaeo-Christian theory wasn't faring any better. A cold comfort, but he _was_ a little smug about it.

He was pretty sure something a lot like this had happened to Daniel Jackson once. Unfortunately, that wasn't very helpful, as _everything_ had happened to Daniel Jackson.

"So this meditation is supposed to put you in _closer_ touch with spiritual nonsense, right?" he said, squatting down between Sheppard and Teyla. "Helloooo... I'm right here...!"

He waved his arms hopefully.

"This isn't working," said Sheppard, and put his head in his hands.

"_Damn _it!" Rodney yelled, and got back up to pace. He'd been doing both of those things a lot lately. "Useless claptrap..."

"All things heal with time," said Teyla quietly, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"And he's 'in a better place', yeah, yeah, but how does that _help_?"

"In a better place." Rodney rolled his eyes with a sigh. "I always knew that was crap."

-

Being dead was actually, he'd discovered, unendurably awkward. It was sort of nice to hear people actually saying nice things about him for once-- and why was it that they only did that when they thought he wasn't there, damn it?-- and while it was _gratifying_ to discover people were sad he was gone, to watch one's own funeral-- there was an irrational sort of guilt about it, as if he were spying on them, as if it were somehow _his_ fault none of them could see him. Intrusive. Exploitative.

None of which had stopped him from heckling Sheppard's eulogy mercilessly. If he wanted respect, he should've talked about things that had actually happened. And made approximately ten fewer jokes at his expense.

He did now have a list of all the people who had rejoiced at his death; unfortunately, he wasn't going to have much use for it, was he?

What he _really_ couldn't live with was the glaring error on that whiteboard in the lab that _nobody_ else had noticed.

"Right," Rodney said, focusing his stare on the red marker. "As Descartes reasoned, cogito, ergo sum. And if I exist, I _can_ move this stupid marker. There is no reason to believe it is impossible. None whatsoever."

He grabbed at the marker. His hand went through.

"Right, if I just focus hard enough, I will be able to move the marker."

He grabbed at the marker. His hand went through.

"If I just-- Oh my _God_." He sat down abruptly, eyes widening. "I've been taking the premises of an 80's Patrick Swayze movie as axiomatic. Oh my _God_. I'm losing my mind. I'm really losing my mind."

"Strauss, I told you _no_!" Zelenka was yelling behind him. "Five times I told you no! You are driving me _crazy_!"

"Just assign Miko to keep him away from the coffee," said Rodney, running a hand over his hair. "Three hours, he starts to get tractable, and Miko uses an astonishingly effective combination of reason and extortion."

"...You know _precicely_ who died and made me God," Zelenka said, very slowly. "Stop your nonsense. Now. Or no one will even _look_ for your body."

"I knew I liked you for a reason," sighed Rodney.

-

"So last night I got posthumous e-mail from Rodney explaining that I am appointed new head of science," Zelenka said.

"Yep," said Rodney. "Deal with it, you lazy Czech weasel."

"Actually, if you don't mind, you _are_ who I intended to appoint," said Elizabeth. "Effective immediately."

"...What?"

Elizabeth turned her laptop toward him. There on the screen, of course, was the letter in which he had explained that if, after his death, they retained the will to survive, they _would _appoint Zelenka as his replacement, or face the consequences.

"I don't know exactly what consequences he meant," said Elizabeth, "but knowing Rodney's tempernment and abilities, I'd rather not take the risk. Not to mention that, in his opinion and mine, you are clearly the one best suited to the job."

"I..." said Zelenka. "That... that is the sweetest thing... I have ever heard him say."

His voice sounded hoarse. Rodney didn't want to think it was from tears.

"I know you probably won't want to assume his place on the gate team--"

"No," said Zelenka. "No, I will."

"What?" said Elizabeth.

"Wait, what?" said Rodney.

"Someone must. It might as well be me." He looked down, then back up, with fresh resolve. "There is no safe place, anyway. There is no way to hide. And so... we do what we must. I do believe Rodney knew this."

Come to think of it, he probably had.

-

He'd tried focusing. He'd tried _not_ focusing. He'd tried walking into people. He'd tried letting people walk into him. He'd stood in front of, behind, and in every functioning Ancient device he could find (the medical ones twice). He'd screamed at the top of his lungs, he'd thrown himself into and off of essentially every object in the city, he'd tried willing into existence every frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum he could think of. Nothing, _nothing_, registered his existence.

He'd sat in on a dozen meditation sessions, done his best to walk in dreams, looked above, below, and around reality as thoroughly as he could-- and no one registered his existence.

The city was recovering. He, conversely, was beginning to lose his mind.

-

When his team and Zelenka went out on their first mission together, he'd felt an obligation to follow.

Now he rather wished he hadn't, because it really wasn't easy to stand by while people you cared about were captured by Wraith.

(The Wraith culling beam registered his existence, at least. That was almost something.)

But if he existed (and that was proof he did), surely, _surely_ there was a way for him to interact with these damn things. Surely there was a way for him to help.

"I _knew_ I should've stayed home," Zelenka muttered, from where he was curled up in the corner.

"Oh, stop whining," Rodney snapped, and tried again to short out the crystal.

"Don't worry," said Sheppard. "We've gotten out of worse."

"Oh, you know _damn well_ that if it were _me_ there, you'd already be telling me I'm a whiny brat, and why does Zelenka always get all the compassion? Is it the accent? Or is it the glasses? Just because _his_ eyes are genetically defective isn't at all a reason to be any nicer to him and why do I still bother talking?"

Come to think of it, why had he _ever_ bothered talking? He'd found very quickly that the feeling of talking and talking (quiet, loud, at the top of your lungs) and never really being heard was bone-familiar to him. Which was probably why that quote had stuck in his head in the first place: _communication is not a fact, it's something you have faith in._

In several important ways, he was beginning to realize, he'd lost all faith in the possibility of communication a long time ago.

Something finally made the door crystal react-- but unfortunately, it was just the Wraith outside, who walked in and let his gaze lazily fall to the corner.

"No," said Rodney.

But even if he were there, his voice wouldn't have registered, and the struggles of Sheppard and Ronon and Teyla weren't availing either; they went right for Zelenka (and he could see the logic in that) and dragged him away.

"_No_," he said, and had to follow.

_There's nothing at all you can do. Why don't you just spare yourself the pain and leave?_

He truly didn't know; he just couldn't.

So he followed Zelenka to the-- whatever they called this room-- empty and strangely lit and the Queen standing in the opposite side.

He couldn't cover his ears anymore-- or he _could_, but it didn't do anything-- but he could still pace, and he could still drown anything in the _world_ out with his voice. "You're idiots," he said. "You're all idiots, because if you're looking for strategic information you're not looking for him, and if you want an engineer, this is _not_ the way to win his loyalty. Are you interrogating him or just-- what? You don't want an engineer with arthritis. Technically it's possible to work like that but I hear it's very, very difficult and if you had any sense at all you'll put him back where you found him."

"...our service..." the Queen was saying.

"But you don't have any sense, do you? You don't know anything at all and you don't understand that we can think, or if you do you just don't care. You don't understand we _will_ be coming for you. You don't understand we've survived everything and lived everywhere and sooner or later, we _will_ surpass you, and we'll extract our justice from everyone who's ever killed us or left us for dead. It's just a matter of time, don't you get it? It's just a matter of space. Have you ever _seen_ how enormous our universe is? There's just no ruling that amount of space. If you had the Hubble it would've changed the course of history."

"You will obey," said the Queen, and Rodney thought of the Hubble Deep Field; tens and hundreds of galaxies lurking behind every random black bit of the sky. There had been days when it was the only thing that got him through. _There is far more out there than even you can ever manage to destroy_, it had told him.

"You won't hurt him," he said, even though he knew he had no power at all. Strode over to stand in front of him, even though he knew there was nothing he could do. "Damn it, you will _not_!"

The Queen reached her hand out--

--and stopped, with her hand an inch into what Rodney stubbornly believed was his chest, tilting her head. And then--

--the world blurred, and tilted, and wasn't it just so perfectly _Pegasus_ that the only thing that registered his existence would be a goddamn Wraith? "The irony," he said, even though he could barely hear himself anymore, "is killing me."

And then the Wraith stiffened, shook, and fell backward, dead.

Rodney and Zelenka stood there for several seconds, in sheer shock.

Then Zelenka ran like hell, and, still recovering from his brush with nonexistence, Rodney followed.

-

"I don't know," Zelenka said, for what had to be at least the sixth time. "It just didn't touch me. It looked like it was trying to drain _something_-- but it never touched me, and then poof! It falls over dead. And naturally I seized opportunity to run like hell."

"Maybe if life can be drained, death can too?" Rodney hypothesized, pacing. He hadn't thought anything else could happen to him, ever again, and while it was comforting in a way that _something_ could, he now felt _even weaker than he had before_, and that should just _not_ be possible. "If I'm even dead. I don't know if I'm really convinced I'm even dead. None of this makes any sense..."

"It just... _died_?" said Elizabeth, understandably skeptical.

"Why haven't I met anyone else who's dead?" Rodney demanded of no one in particular. "Or, if I'm not dead, why haven't I met anyone who's not dead? Shouldn't there be someone else this has happened to? Shouldn't there be someone else who can see me? Shouldn't it be someone's job to tell people like me _what the hell is going on_?

"Or is it just that nobody cares?"

"It just died," Zelenka confirmed, with a helpless shrug. "And then I ran, and hid a lot, and performed rather brilliant operations on computer systems with no supplies whatsoever, and we escaped and the ship blew up. Could we maybe spend three seconds on how nice it is that I escaped and we all lived _before_ we work on how? Just three seconds, that is all."

"Get used to it, Zelenka," Rodney muttered. "It won't stop. Nobody cares. I can believe that nobody cares. In fact, I can say that I have felt the presence of a higher power that entirely fails to give a damn about us for my entire life. _Why is this happening to me?_"

"Why on earth would a Wraith just _die_?"

"Why on earth would _anything_ just die?" Rodney snapped.

Answers; he needed answers; perpetually he needed answers. And there were so damn few.

-

No one else could figure out the mystery of the drop-dead Queen either, which didn't even _remotely_ surprise him. He'd feel a lot more smug about it if he could do anything, _anything_, but watch the world go by.

"But why exactly _did_ you want to talk with us?" Sheppard asked, stepping out of the wormhole with-- Chaya. Fantastic.

"There is trouble coming," she said-- and looked at him. Looked at him.

"Oh, god, of course you can see me, can't you?" he said. Because this was Pegasus, and Pegasus hated him. Of course, Pegasus was not in any way alone in that opinion.

"You didn't tell me that Dr. McKay was dead," she said, looking right at him. And tilted her head, a question in her eyes.

"I-- how did you know that?"

And that was her question-- _should I say?_-- and he suddenly realized, to his utter astonishment, that the answer was 'no'. Not if all it could do was hurt them.

"Can you help me?" he asked, as her answer. "Can you change it? Would it help?"

She shook her head, very slightly, and lowered her head in sadness. "He was always to be found with you. When he did not come to our planet with you, I suspected-- and, not seeing him here, I knew. I am so very sorry."

"Incidentally, do you happen to know _what the hell's happened to me_?"

"I wish I had more time," she said. "But this is very urgent. The Wraith are on the move."

"No, really," said Rodney. "You do realize you're the only person in the _universe_ I can talk to?"

"Oh," Sheppard said. "That doesn't sound good."

"It's not."

"No, really, just tell me, damn it-- _am I dead or not?!_"

"We must talk," she said, and let Sheppard lead her up to the meeting room.

"What the hell did I ever do to you?!" Rodney yelled after her.

-

Rodney was still slightly ashamed to be stealing techniques from an 80's Patrick Swayze movie, but, as they said, desperate times.

"...forever just because, This is the song that never ends; it just goes on and on, my friends! Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was--"

"Would you excuse me?" said Chaya, because the conversation had turned to strategy anyway.

"Yeah-- all right."

She swept out the door. "You do realize you're only degrading yourself?" she said, very quietly.

"No one else can hear me. What do you _suggest_ I do? Not to mention it's quite possible this has driven me insane. _Please_, ma'am," he begged, driven by desperation to civility. "_Answer_ me. Am I dead or not?"

"You are not alive," she said. "That I can tell you for sure. But this... I have almost never seen this before. It is very rare."

"So this doesn't happen to everyone?" That thought was a great comfort to him, he found.

"No. Death is a mystery to us, even if few are willing to admit it... Why, how this happens, I do not know. But I have seen it. None but our species-- and a very talented few humans-- can see or hear or speak to you. You cannot interact with matter at all. But the Wraith can interact with you. The Wraith are quite probably the only thing in the universe that can hurt you at all anymore."

"Yeah," he said, "I had, unfortunately, noticed that. There isn't _any_ way for me to-- to contact them, to do anything?"

She shook her head. "None that I have ever seen. You can do no good here."

"I did kill a Wraith," he said, obscurely proud of that.

"Draining you may kill them-- but it will kill you, too. Another such encounter will almost certainly kill you. Dr. McKay... you could go anywhere, do you realize that?"

"How can I dial the Stargate like this?"

"You don't need the Stargate, anymore. You could go anywhere-- and there isn't anything else in the universe that could pose a threat to you."

"Huh," he said, not seeing her point.

"You could leave," she explained patiently. "You have no reason not to. You have every reason in favor. Why not flee from danger? Why not let go of your past?"

Why not indeed? "Because I don't believe there's nothing I can do."

"But there _isn't_."

"I have to try."

"Why? What do you owe them?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't understand it. I never have. But: I do. And I'm not going to abandon them, even _if_ I can't help them, even _if_ they'll never know. So drop that subject. Now."

She shook her head, with a look of exasperation and admiration. "Rodney McKay. I don't stand the slightest chance of ever understanding you, do I?"

"I doubt it," he said, and smiled.

-

It really was a simple decision, in the end. After all, it was the only action he _could_ take, anymore. The only way he stood even a remote chance of helping.

To his astonishment, even in the chaos, even in the helplessness, he found he couldn't regret it.

Until the Queen looked at him and said, "I can see you, you know."

And before he'd had time to react, her hand had been in his chest, pulling out just enough of his (death?) that he could tell she wasn't bluffing.

"We have tales of those like you," she said. "There are legends. The Watchers, you're called. Who wander about, from world to world, unseen, seeing all. It is said to drain a Watcher is to flirt with death. But you've already been drained, haven't you? I can feel it. I would kill you before you killed me."

"But I _would _kill you," he pointed out, actually rather relieved to have that confirmed. And terrified. Very, very terrified.

She shrugged. "Perhaps. What would lie beyond death for me, who knows for sure? But you are already dead. You face... nonexistence."

She drew her face closer to his. "Don't try to fool me. In my years, I have learned one sure thing about you humans: your primitive, animal instinct to survive. You want to live, like every other animal. Would it interest you to know you could survive this?"

He didn't say a word-- though it was hard.

"Just tell me," she whispered. "No one will ever know. Even I will never tell. Tell me the address of Earth... and I will let you go. You can leave here, go anywhere you want-- probably live forever. No one will know. No one will blame you. You could go halfway across the universe and never come this way again."

So small, in the grand scheme of things.

"If you refuse, there will be no one to praise you. And again, I will never tell. No one will ever know. Not ever. You will be dead, erased utterly, simply for not giving me the information I will, I assure you, get eventually from someone else anyway. No one will know to blame you. No one will know to praise you. Just eight symbols. Eternity... just eight symbols away."

And no one would know. _No one would know._

"Don't you understand?" he said. "What would be the point of-- of just _watching_, anyway? And _forever_-- is that supposed to sound appealing?"

"More so than death," she said, and pulled out just a little more of his-- whatever, precisely, it was.

The room spun and the floor opened and he could feel it, taking parts of him: _nonexistence_. So close. _I don't want to die_--

Because: _I have so much more to do_--

_For my people-- for us--_

_God damn it, why did I have to pick __**now**__ to get patriotic?_

Sheppard and Sam and Jeannie and his cat and the janitor and Jackson and--

Why did no one else understand how _terrifying_ it was to know there were things you'd place above your own life?

"No one will know," she said. "No one will care. No one ever cared, did they?"

But he had already decided. "Maybe not. The trouble is, neither do I." He lifted his chin, to suggest a bravery and resolve he did not even remotely feel. "Do it, if you dare. You never know: I don't trust your worthless, biased legends as far as you can throw them. Maybe I'll see you in hell."

A storm crossed her features, and she _yanked_--

_Miko and Radek and Jones from anthropology and Faith Simmons from college and Milton Rogers from third grade--_

--and the room was spinning--

_MREs and BSG and Star Trek and Hill Street Blues and public transit--_

--and it was all going to disappear--

_Anime and Doctor Who and gay marriage and Mars bars--_

--and he had done all that he could--

_The Eiffel Tower and universal health care and university and theses--_

--and he was going--

_Harry Potter and the Bible and Lord of the Rings and Catch-22--_

--and he was falling--

_Clubs and schools and families and everything else I never belonged to--_

--and he was not.

-

And, slowly, then he was.

It seemed to come by degrees: the feel of rough linen around him, dim light causing the blood in his eyelids to glow, the smell of smoke and steak lingering in the air, something bitter still in his mouth...

Someone yelling outside...

"Let us _in_, damn it, and-- oh my god." He knew the voice. It should probably matter to him; he was just too tired to remember quite why. "Why the hell is he unconcsious? _What the hell did you do to him?_"

"He is well," someone else said, and there was the delicate brush of a hand against his cheek, a firm press of fingers to his wrist. "He should awaken soon."

"Which doesn't tell me _what the hell you did to him_." Sheppard. Oh. It was Sheppard.

"As we told you. It is simply a test of loyalty."

"_Simply_? He's _unconscious_!"

"That is part of the test. We must apologize, though." Something new came into the man's voice; Rodney couldn't quite place the emotion. "We didn't think it would take so long. It almost _never_ takes so long. Usually we find the limits of loyalty quickly, and learn to live with it. We all have our breaking points; we all have our temptations; but this person..."

Hang on, was that something like _awe_? "Such a strange combination. Bravado and cowardice, bitterness and integrity, brilliance and stubbornness, antisocial and ambitious and uncomprehendingly loyal... This is his worldview, of course, but he's absolutely _convinced_ no one will ever take the time to understand him, or even want to, or even be capable of it if they tried. He _is_ wrong, isn't he?"

"I-- you're going to take him and make him do some stupid ritual for hours and leave him unconscious and ask if WE care about him?!"

..._Shit_; all those questions and only one had really mattered. The first damn one he'd thought to ask. _Test your loyalty, they said. Test your loyalty to __**what**_

"Answer the question," Ronon 'suggested'. Rodney knew that face. He was about to get an answer.

"It is a simple test of loyalty," the man repeated, much more quickly this time. "The one tested drinks the potion and goes into a trance. Our shaman enters a trance with him and guides his vision. It is a test of whether one would betray our people to the Wraith. But his mind, your whole world, was so strange and confusing. It took time to formulate the question. The temptation, if you will. It took time to figure out even what it was, and still... he never left you. The thought never even crossed his mind; I had to suggest it to him. He could have escaped, and no one would care, or indeed even know; there was no reason whatsoever not to; and he stayed. It goes to show, you can never predict loyalty from appearence, or even from manner..."

His body felt so sluggish; he should probably be worried about that, but he couldn't yet.

"What are you talking about?" Sheppard demanded. "What did you do to him?"

"That story is his to tell. Or not to tell, as he wishes. I would not intrude upon his privacy."

"...You just _broke into his mind_. _**Privacy**_"

Rodney stirred, and blinked, and opened his eyes as wide as he could, because it sounded like Sheppard might actually do something fairly stupid if he didn't.

"Rodney?" said Teyla, and slid her hand into his. "You are awake?"

He tried to say yes, but somehow his throat wouldn't form the sounds yet; so he settled for nodding instead.

"You are awake!" said the shaman, hurrying to his side as well. "Are you well? Is there anything you need?"

Rodney lifted his arm a few inches, with some effort, and flipped him off.

"Is that a no?"

"I think it's a 'shut up and get the hell away from me'," said Sheppard, looming behind the shaman cheerfully. "I think we'd all be very grateful if you followed his advice."

Huh, Rodney thought, as the shaman bowed and hurried out the door. Communication. So it _did_ happen sometimes.

-

Something in the stupid potion they'd given him had temporarily paralyzed Rodney's vocal cords. He was very unhappy about this, but his voice would come back, and he had gestures and whiteboards and so many _things_ to touch and throw... He found himself running everything through his fingers, butting mutely into every conversation, though he hadn't had much opportunity to given how Carson had practically locked him in the infirmary.

"We're giving our report tomorrow," said Sheppard. "Carson says you'll still have to type it."

_Yes, but it should be back in about a week_, Rodney typed, shrugging philosophically. _Fortunately I type very quickly_.

"Yeah." Sheppard looked at his hands. "What're you going to tell 'em?"

_What, besides that a bunch of idiots decided to test my loyalty to my species by drugging me and sending me on a-- what would the word be? 'Vision quest' implies a quest--_

"Yeah," Sheppard said. "Besides that. They'll probably want to know how much that shaman knows about the city."

_Huh._ Rodney frowned. _Probably not as much as you'd think, given that I couldn't actually do anything in the city. Hopefully most of the technical details were blurry... He'd know a little about us, but not much more than we'd have told them... Not the address for Earth, if that's what you were afraid of. On the other hand, he does know that there is an Earth, and that it has an address, and that the Wraith want to know it, and why... Damn it. Have I mentioned how much I hate ritual and religion?_

"You couldn't do anything in the city? What was the dream thing about, then?"

He hesitated. _I thought I was dead_, he typed. _It was all infuriatingly reminiscent of that damn 80's Patrick Swayze movie._

"You mean 'Ghost'?"

_I prefer not to admit I know its name. Except in the movie, he could move things, eventually, right? And Whoopi Goldberg could see him._

"And you couldn't," Sheppard inferred. "That must have sucked."

_Yes._

"And you never left," he said.

Rodney couldn't think of anything to answer.

"That scares the crap out of you, doesn't it?" Sheppard sighed. "To be honest... okay, it kind of scares me too. I guess I _like_ thinking you're self-centered. I _like_ thinking you're a coward. That would mean you'd never put yourself in danger. That'd mean you'd always be safe. But... You're not. Not anymore. Probably you never really were. So it's insulting to you to keep thinking that way, but it's so _easy_..."

He leaned his head on his hand. "So yeah, it's frightening. But it's not a bad thing. It isn't. And... don't think we don't appreciate it. Maybe a lot of the time, a lot of us don't. But... a lot of us do."

He stood up, abruptly. "So. See you tomorrow morning," he said, and left.

Rodney stared after him for a moment, mouth slightly open... then smiled, closed his eyes and thought of life. Life, a limitless universe, and the possibility of communication.

(-)


End file.
